"The choice of the node mode largely depends on the type of application and the parallel
paradigm that has been implemented for a particular application. The obvious case involves
applications where a hybrid paradigm between MPI and OpenMP has been implemented. In
this case, it is beneficial to use the SMP node mode. If you are writing single-threaded
applications, you should consider Virtual Node Mode.

I/O-intensive tasks that require a relatively large amount of data interchange between
Compute Nodes benefit more by using Virtual Node Mode. Those applications that are
primarily CPU bound and do not have large working memory requirements (the application
gets only half of the node memory), run more quickly in Virtual Node Mode."

Guide Index

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